Jean-Pierre Blais

Former Chairman & CEO, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)

Jean-Pierre Blais was Chairman & CEO of CRTC until June 2017. Before joining the CRTC, Mr Blais was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Board Secretariat’s Government Operations Sector.

From 2004 to 2011, he was Assistant Deputy Minister of Cultural Affairs at the Department of Canadian Heritage. His responsibilities included legislation, policies and programs related to copyright modernisation, broadcasting, the cultural industries and the arts, as well as trade policy and cultural treaties. As the Director of Investment, he reviewed transactions in the cultural sector under the Investment Canada Act.

From 1994 to 2004, after practising law with a large Montreal law firm, Mr Blais served successively as Senior Legal Counsel, General Counsel (Broadcasting) and Executive Director (Broadcasting) at the CRTC, and as Assistant Deputy Minister of International and Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Canadian Heritage. In this position, he was responsible for Sport Canada, Canada's bid for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, negotiating the UNESCO Treaty on Doping in Sports and Federal-Provincial cultural relations.

Mr Blais holds a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne in Australia, as well as a Bachelor of Civil Law and a Bachelor of Common Law from McGill University.

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